St. Louis police is still waiting for their snow camouflage parkas.
Image source: vanityfair
Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where peaceful protesters faced St Louis county police equipped with machine guns, gas masks, camouflage, and armored vehicles, has made it clear that your local police department might be armed well enough to defeat the army of a country like Albania or Guatemala. As it turns out, Pentagon has a multi-billion dollar program which gives away all kinds of military hardware to the police, from the basic stuff like assault rifles, sniper scopes, and grenade launchers, to more advanced machinery like helicopters and armored vehicles, and to occasional non-military equipment. For example, Pentagon gave New Orleans police things like snow camouflage and men’s scarves. And although many people believe that the police doesn’t need things like armored vehicles or snow camouflage in snow-less New Orleans, all of this equipment is truly necessary for police work. Here are the explanations for 10 of the items actually given by Pentagon to the New Orleans police.
1) 1 Armored Personnel Carrier: This vehicle is needed to help black police officers get home safely after they’ve completed their shifts and changed into civilian clothing. Don’t you know how dangerous it is for an unarmed black man to drive through an area of heavy police presence?
2) 1 Mine-Resistant Vehicle: Considering the strong influence of French culture in New Orleans (including some of the less pleasant aspects of it), it’s very likely that the requisition form contained a typo, and the police mean to request a mime-resistant vehicle.
3) 20 snow camouflage parkas and 10 pairs of snowshoes: Because the people who govern Louisiana claim that global warming is a hoax and the planet is actually experiencing a global cooling, the New Orleans police expect that they would have to fight crime waist-deep in the snow any day now.
4) 3 circulating fans: Because it gets really hot in New Orleans, especially if you’re wearing snow camouflage parkas and snowshoes.
5) 360 men’s scarves: When camouflage and gas masks dehumanize police officers and turn them into some kind of scary forest-dwelling robots, a carefully picked elegant scarf can give them an element of flair and respectability.
6) 30 survival axes: An absolutely necessary item for repelling a zombie attack. If Pentagon already has a strategy for fighting zombies, it would only be fair if New Orleans police does join the battle, too.
7) 1 parachute bag (without the parachute): Should a bad guy hijack the helicopter and demand a suitcase of money and a parachute, he would be in for a nasty surprise when he jumps out with the money and discovers that his parachute bag is filled with 50 of those men’s scarves.
8) 1 infrared telescope: Because how else would you put a surveillance on that suspicious alien spaceship with the expired licence plates?
9) 46 laundry nets: Obviously an ideal instrument for catching money launderers.
10) 12 searchlights: Today’s criminals have gotten used to standard police interrogation techniques, and a regular 100-Watt lamp pointed in their face just doesn’t get the confessions like it used to.
Thanks to Eideard for the story. Also, the full list included things like pliers, chainsaw, bug-proof jackets, life raft, life preservers, diver’s suits, hammer, rubber mallet, machete, space heater, laser pointers, forklift, cork sheets, insulation tape, magnifier, battery chargers, generator, desk light, photo camera and tripod, folding chairs (at $1,096.99 each), garbage can, coffee maker, rubber sheets, and computer mice – so please feel free to add your explanations for these.
List of X 
No doubt the cork sheets are for when they cork a bad guy over the head they can cover him with a cork sheet. That way fellow officers know which bad guys have been put out of service by being corked.
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Or maybe the officers were going to pin the suspect down to the cork board.
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The laser pointers are used to distract marauding gangs of housecats. The garbage cans are for disposing of any copies of the Constitution that might be cluttering up the office.
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I think that the marauding gangs of housecats would get even hungrier and scarier when they find that all the garbage cans are filled with the copies of the Constitution instead of food.
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Excellent rationale for global cooling. Meanwhile, the rubber sheets must be for the cutouts at the condom workshop.
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Or, they don’t have to bother with individual cutouts, and just use the rubber sheet to cover the whole department.
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Magnifier to search for the last vestiges of civil liberty. Perhaps they have a flame thrower to torch said liberties?
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If that magnifier is a glass lens, it could also be used for setting things on fire.
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Obviously, they need the garbage can to have a place to throw the cork sheets, insulation tape, magnifier, battery chargers, desk light, etc., etc.
No suburban police force is complete without a grenade launcher. I know it’s for tear gas and not actual grenades, but still.
It blows my mind that America can be both the envy of so many and still manage to be a laughing stock.
I think this might be your best one yet. And that’s saying something. You got me with “mime resistant.”
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Thank you. Those mimes are definitely evil, and they always refuse to talk to the police. Maybe all those pliers and machetes are needed just to get them to talk.
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Reblogged this on MrMilitantNegro™.
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Thank you for the re-blog!
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Great post, thank you for posting it.
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They need more cowbell.
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I think their sirens perform the same function very well (and a little too well) already.
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Like the ones from Greek mythology?
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Kind of, except that the sounds of Greek sirens make want to go TOWARDS them.
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Da
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I wish I had your gift of sarcasm and humor. 😛 Well done!
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And I wish I knew as much about parenting as you do 🙂
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You outdid yourself this time. ROFLMAO
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Thank you!
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I think it’s clear that the NO cops were hedging their bets on number 3, the snow parkas and snow shoes, by ordering the bug-resistant jackets. If they were wrong about global warming, O mon Dieu!, these will be important for warding off tropical diseases like chikingunga and ebola. (Do not tell Faux News, they don’t consider “wrong” to be an option.)
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Don’t worry, I won’t, because I don’t consider Fox to be news 🙂
Looking at the items in the list, it looked like the New Orleans police were planning to open a hardware store to compete against Home Depot.
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I think they should give us all tanks… so we can fight the terrorists…
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But then the terrorists will also have tanks.
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well, that seems fair
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but how do we know who is in which tank?
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That is why we all also need surveillance drones and spy satellites…
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“a mime-resistant vehicle.”—Hahaha! Good thinking. I hear the ghost of Marcel Marceau has been getting around.
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I heard that the ghost of Marcel Marceau is still trying to escape from an invisible coffin. 🙂
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Poor guy. He needs Houdini.
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Ummmm, everything makes perfect sense except the desk lamps. Who brings a desk to a riot? That would simply be overkill.
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Well, maybe not the desk itself, but a desk lamp can be useful during those nightly raids against the protesters.
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I missed this post some how. But I got it now. Great list. I bet when those gifts from the pentagon come in it’s like christmas for the police.
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Thank you. And they’d need a sequoia for the Christmas tree, so that at least the treetop peeks out from under the mountain of these presents.
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I am thinking those big bad cops will be dressing well in the future with those scarves, will they be in pretty pastels or something brighter?
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Haha! Wonderful items all. I’m so happy to hear New Orleans is so well prepared for the winter. I don’t have to lie awake wondering about it at night anymore.
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Actually, they seem to be prepared for everything. I even found boots for mountain skiing in the list – which means they’re getting ready for mountains suddenly popping up in downtown.
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Well, good for them. It’s always annoying when a mountain pops up out of nowhere and you don’t have the proper boots handy. 😉
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Does it mean anything that when I first read #2, I thought it said MIME-resistant?
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It just means that you are better than New Orleans police at assessing whether mines or mimes constitute a more credible threat in their city.
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Now I’m picturing police hunkered down behind barricades in the Big Easy, fending off assault by wave after wave of determined mimes pretending to shoot guns at them.
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X!! You seriously have some kinda wit! Are you trying to get me fired?? hoo boy! The really sad thing is you didn’t make this up! How much for a folding chair?? $1,096.99?? Boy I sure hope they got a LOT of them! How do I get on the list? I am pretty sure I am in more need that the good ole boys in Narleens. besides, they just got a lot….
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I am certainly not trying to get you fired. Unless you work for the NSA and your job is to track my online activities, or something like that.
I think the police got 9 chairs, but they didn’t pay anything to Pentagon: it’s what Pentagon paid for them.
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They must be REALLY nice folding chairs… No, I do not now, nor have I ever been employed by the NSA, I stalk you online simply because it’s fun.
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Sobering topic but “mime proof” made me giggle on the inside.
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Inside the mime-resistant vehicle, right? Because you don’t want to be outside if mimes launch their silent attack.
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DId you hear about the Palin brawl? It’s on Huffpost. It’s like they’re just giving you comedy write-ups. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/11/palin-family-brawl_n_5805816.html
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That was priceless. I think I’ll write about Sarah next. I was thinking ISIS, but this is obviously more important.
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As far as this Pentagon stuff – how did the police get hold of what was clearly your local librarian’s list of supplies?
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Well, obviously, how else can you get people return their overdue books without a tank or a grenade launcher?
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